Although not participating in this year’s Dine Out Vancouver event, Cravings Restaurant offers its own $16 and $26 set dinner menus. My hubby and I discovered Cravings Restaurant through a friend’s birthday dinner, a neighborhood restaurant tucked away behind SW Marine Drive between the Oak Street bridge and Arthur Liang bridge in Marpole. We were quite surprised this restaurant was fairly busy on a Saturday night within this quiet neighborhood.

As the party was quite big, there is an area in the restaurant that has a great setup for a large group of 20 that’s bookable. In fact the room can be completely booked out for a private event if you had more people, as capacity could fit at least 40 to 50 people sitting and has its own bar and TVs setup. They had the Canucks game on, so some of our party guests were watching the game during dinner.

The set menus were popular with our group. Most diners in our group ordered from the $16 menu. My hubby and I ordered 1 $16 set menu, consisting of Cup of Soup – Cravings’ Spicy Chicken Soup, Moules & Frites, and Mini White Chocolate Torte.

Since we weren’t particularly hungry, we decided to order just one set menu, and an additional entree. I decided to order the large (main) Beetroot and Goat Cheese Salad. The Beetroot and Goat Cheese Salad consists of a bed of mixed greens with red and yellow beets, candied walnuts, and creamy goat cheese dressed with a maple vinaigrette. I really enjoyed the beets and wish they had offered a bit more of the beets. The goat cheese was smooth and creamy.

For the set menu, the choice between soup was the soup of the day and the Cravings’ Spicy Chicken Soup (we chose the latter). Their house special soup consists of a creamy tomato soup with chicken breast, curry, cayenne and vegetables. It was a bit spicy but hearty. A much better choice than the vegetable lentil soup as the alternative.

For the main, Moules & Frites includes half a pound of mussels steamed in white wine, butter, shallots and garlic, accompanied with fries and a delicious lemon-dill aioli. The mussels were steamed well, the sauce light yet flavorful. The home run was the lemon-dill aioli dip for the fries.

For dessert, we ordered the Mini White Chocolate Torte instead of the Apple Pie as they were sold out of that. However, we found the dessert a little underwhelming and overly sweet. It was bite-sized and quite a small portion served on a fairly big plate. However, the Mini Brownie that some of the other friends ordered looked bigger and moist and tastier served in a martini glass. I wished we had ordered the brownie instead, however my hubby enjoyed the torte.

Overall a great neighborhood restaurant, with some hearty dishes. However, next time we come, definitely trying the apple pie!